The level of paranoia within the Somerton Old Guard seems to be reaching some sort of fever pitch with a Mr Paul Audemars joining in the fray. I don't know very much about Mr Audemars other than that he seems to be or have been involved in a business based on the Bancombe Trading Estate and he is also the registered owner of the somerton.co.uk domain name. But, however little I know about Mr Audemars, he certainly seems keen to know about my researches into the activities of the old Somerton Town Council. To help him on his way, and to add to Inspector Raybouldi's workload, I thought that it might be useful to make available some documents which, taken together, have always bothered me.
Images 1 and 2 were individual pages and pages 3, 4 and 5 were one document. If you double click on the thumbnails you can read them yourselves.
The first document is an invoice from A H Canvin to Edgar Builders for in excess of £10k for work undertaken on behalf of Edgar Builders by A H Canvin. At the date of invoice, 12th August 2008, the land at Etsome Terrace was still owned by Somerton Town Council.
The second document is a 'petition' signed by eight of Somerton's Town Councillors, requesting a public meeting to discuss the proposed purchase of what would become the Tin Dunny. This document is dated 15th August 2008, three days after the Canvin invoice. (The signatories are Neale, Rees, Bisgrove, Medley, Holland, Raybould, Smith M and Deering). It was reported that Cllr Canvin was not best pleased when informed of the petition and sought out Cllr Rees (the organiser of the petition) to let him know. Part of this exchange was reportedly witnessed by another of the signatories, Cllr Martyn Smith.
The third document, comprising three pages, is a report to Councillors, dated 19th August 2008, which would seem to be in response to the request for a public meeting. It is a remarkably biased document, produced, I understand, by the Town Clerk. It deals, almost entirely, with the supposedly catastrophic consequences of the asset swap not happening and, spookily, it prefigures the mass resignation. But it fails to mention the fact that the Mitchem Family had agreed to relax the covenant on the playing fields, allowing a community facility to be built there. It also fails to mention that West of England had tendered to build a community hall for a little more than half of what the Tin Dunny cost to buy (excluding the refurb).
These documents probably say different things to different people but I would ask a simple question, "Would the Canvin invoice have been settled had the asset swap not been agreed by the Town Council?". Presumably, the answer to that is that the invoice would not have been settled. Were that to be the implication then is it possible that there was a degree of pre-determination in the Council's consideration of the deal? I don't know and I hope that the External Auditor has looked at this aspect of the documentation.
Whatever the case, I'm sure that we can rest easy in our beds as we have Briggs, Audemars, Raybouldi and Medley (aka the BARMy Army) on the case. They'll get to the bottom of it and I'm sure that they'll establish, with absolute certainty, that I forged these documents and its all part of wicked conspiracy to undermine something or other. Maybe they are spending too much time on David Icke's website.
Till next conspiracy, I'm still Niall Connolly